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Saturday, February 7, 2009

A Wealth of Future Mission Descriptions and Concepts

The Lunar and Planetary Science conference is one of the big annual conferences in this field. While the conference focuses on results from mission in progress (or past missions), there are always a few stray future mission descriptions or concepts sprinkled in. This year's conference, however, has a wealth of presentations on both. Another nice thing about this conference is that most talks also have substantial (generally two full page) abstracts that provide a lot of detail.

INTERNATIONAL LUNAR NETWORK http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/2021.pdf
I believe that this also is an approved NASA mission that would land 4 surface stations on the moon with additional stations for a total of 8-10 provided by other nations. This mission would focus on studies of the lunar interior through seismic, heatflow, electrical conductivity, and rotational dynamics studies.

Moonlite http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/1508.pdf
This is a short summary of a mission concept to study many of the same areas as the International Lunar Network but would use high impact penetrators (which would limit payload mass) instead of soft landers.

Venus Flagship http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/2410.pdf
A nice (two page) summary of the forthcoming Venus Flagship mission consisting of an orbiter, two balloons, and two landers for a mid-2020's launch. The orbiter would provide data relay from the balloons and landers before settling into a low orbit for high resolution (I've heard elsewhere 5-10 m) radar imaging of a few percent of the surface (much like HiRISE images a small percentage of Mars' surface) and atmospheric studies. The landers would be designed to last for several hours to allow indepth analysis of soil samples.

Mars-Next http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/1271.pdf
This would be an ambitious ESA mission to Mars to establish a network of 3-4 landers and an orbiter. The landers would study Mars' interior through seismometry and rotational dynamics studies from radio tracking, atmospheric physics, and studies of the chemistry of rocks and soils. The orbiter would provide data relay and global studies of the atmosphere.

Cerebus (Mars Network) http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/2485.pdf
This is a mission that apparently will be proposed for the next NASA New Frontiers selection. Like Mars-Next, this is a network mission with many of the same goals, but without its own orbiter. The mission summary is longer than that for Mars-Next.

Asteroids and Comets

Deep Interior http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/2109.pdf
This Discovery mission concept would rendezvous with Wild 2 (which Stardust flew past) and use ground penetrating radar to image the interior structure of a comet at 10 m resolution as well as high resolution imaging of the surface and mapping of the surface topography with a laser altimeter.

MISSION CONCEPTS TO 4015 WILSON-HARRINGTON http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/2391.pdf
This small body exhibits characteristics of both an asteroid and a comet. This paper looks at several mission concepts including a Discovery class orbiter/lander and a New Frontiers class sample return mission.

ASIMA (Asteroid Impact Analyzer) http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/2305.pdf
This is not a mission in its own right but an instrument that would be added to a low Earth orbit communications satellite. The instrument would study the meteor trails of dust entering the Earth's atmosphere to learn the composition and size of the parent material. Since source of many of the meteors can be traced back to specific comets, this allows a low cost way of studying their composition.

Shotput Sample Return http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/1223.pdf
This mission would have a spacecraft flyby a mainbelt, a Trojan, and a Centaur asteroid. At each body, an impactor would strike the target and the spacecraft would fly through the dust plume to sample the surface material. From the mainbelt asteroid, samples of the plume would be collected and returned to Earth during an Earth flyby.

Jupiter and Saturn

Argus (Io) http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/1062.pdf
JPL runs a summer school to teach the principles of planetary mission design. Last year's project was to define a New Frontiers mission concept for repeated flybys of Io. This mission would be more capable than the Io Volcano Observer. Forty flybys would be done at 10.6 increments during a two year Io observing campaign. The design assumes design heritage would be available from a Europa Jupiter Flagship mission. Jason Perry has a nice summary of this mission at his blog.

About Me

You can contact me at futureplanets1@gmail.com with any questions or comments.
I have followed planetary exploration since I opened my newspaper in 1976 and saw the first photo from the surface of Mars. The challenges of conceiving and designing planetary missions has always fascinated me. I don't have any formal tie to NASA or planetary exploration (although I use data from NASA's Earth science missions in my professional work as an ecologist).
Corrections and additions always welcome.